Jack has volunteered to help at the International, a PGA Tour event that is being held in a nearby town. Since he got some passes, I will be going up tomorrow. I’ve never watched any professional golf before. I am glad that I checked the site, since I learned that cameras are not permitted.
Category: Life
Quote of the day
My goodness. Google Alert just informed me that my name came up on qotd, one of the quote of the day sites. The quote was Art is too much fun to be left only to those who are good at it.
I used this in my email signature block for years before I decided my signature was getting too complicated.
(Zempt gets very cranky when you try to reference a deleted weblog.)
Dogs
I can’t believe that between the time we moved to Texas in June 1990 to the time we moved to Colorado in November 1992, we acquired five dogs. We had been without a dog for many years, and we sort of went overboard when we finally had the space. We had gone back down to zero for a month before we acquired Dudley, our Rottweiler cross, and Lody, our smooth Collie a few months later. Somewhere in the course of five dogs, we had decided two dogs were quite enough.
I have been remembering what it was like to have a large pack because we do again, temporarily. My sister-in-law is traveling, and her regular dog sitter had other plans, so Lily and Lightning are staying with usfor ten days.
Continue reading Dogs
Coyote
I was woken by the coyotes’ singing last night. We don’t hear them very often here in our valley: those we see seem to be passing through.
Continue reading Coyote
Farmer’s Market
I had to run an errand this morning in downtown Colorado Springs, and just happened to pass by the Farmers Market held in Monument Park on Thursday mornings. Once my errand was complete, I stopped by and picked up tomatoes, green beans, and corn. Since I bought too much for me and Jack to eat in a few days, I gave some of each to my trainer. I have to restrain myself at Farmers’ Markets, because I can end up with more produce than we can eat, even with my trainer’s assistance. It all looks so good.
I won’t eat tomatoes most of the year, but in season I like them when they are home grown or from a farmers market. I had one tonight with a quick quesadilla, and it was a B plus. (Non seasonal ones from the supermarket are usually a D minus.) I am looking forward to the green beans. I don’t like frozen green beans very much, but I have discovered that fresh ones cooked in the steamer are quite acceptable.
It was too hot to ride this afternoon: I already felt drained by running errands in the heat. Even with the air conditioning in the car I was tired. Instead, I brought Lily and Hap into the barn, groomed them, did a little ground based clicker training with them, and applied fresh fly spray. It was 88F in the barn, which means it was much hotter outside in the sun.
Swat!
After putting the image of the sunset silhouette in my other weblog this morning, I decided it would make a nice graphic for this weblog, so I used Paint Shop Pro to add the title, and changed the various settings of background and text colors to go along with it. Now the other graphic looks out of place, but I haven’t decided whether to move it down the list or remove it all together.
I feel as though I have spent more time playing with the design of this weblog than writing for it.
The weather was a relief today, with temperatures in the mid to high eighties instead of the nineties. I took advantage of the refreshing change to run errands.
I checked one thing off the guilt list today. The flies have been bad this year, and Lody tends to be particularly bothered by them. The flies cluster on the ends of her ears, which is disgusting enough. Even worse, their bites can turn her ears into a bloody mess. Dudley, in the same environment, has no problem with them. I discovered last summer that Swat, an insect repellent commonly used on horses, works like a charm, and finally bought some today. (Swat was recommended for Lody by our vet.) Fortunately, unlike the stuff I got from my trainer last year, the Swat that I bought today is clear, not pink. Pink ears on a tri-color collie was not a good look.
Too Hot
It is too hot to write, almost too hot to think. The upside of living in Colorado at 7200 feet is that you hardly ever need air conditioning. The downside is that you don’t have it for those few days each summer when you could use it. At least it cools off at night. I was wearing my red polar fleece robe for a while this morning, which seems like a remote fantasy now.
I did ride Lily today. She seemed a lot more enthusiastic about it than I was. However, we did have one first: the first time she did a flying change when I deliberately requested it. A flying change of lead is when the horse switches from one canter lead to the other. The canter is an asymmetrical gait, with the inside shoulder slightly in front of the outside shoulder, so when you change directions, you should change which shoulder leads. For less trained horses, this is done with a few steps of trot. For a trained horse, it should be done in one stride, almost like a child skipping.
After riding Lily, I helped do some clicker training with the school horses. I ended up working with one of the newest school horses, a fifteen year old Thoroughbred named Cappy. He is a little rude when being led, so I used the clicker to start tuning up his ground manners.
The high point of the afternoon was filling the hummingbird feeders. One hummingbird didn’t want to wait for me to fill it, and was drinking from the feeder as I held it. I managed to summon enough energy to fill the dishwasher as well. I felt a lot better about my lack of energy when I checked the thermometer and it was 86F inside the house.